“The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read.”

“When journalism is silenced, literature must speak. Because while journalism speaks with facts, literature speaks with truth.”

“Journalism is literature in a hurry.”

“Any work of art that can be understood is the product of journalism. The rest, called literature, is a dossier of human imbecility for the guidance of future professors.”

“That was the chief difference between literature and life. In books, the proportion of exceptional to commonplace people is high; in reality, very low.”

“Literature cannot develop between the categories "permitted"—"not permitted"—"this you can and that you can't." Literature that is not the air of its contemporary society, that dares not warn in time against threatening moral and social dangers, such literature does not deserve the name of literature; it is only a facade. Such literature loses the confidence of its own people, and its published works are used as waste paper instead of being read.-Letter to the Fourth National Congress of Soviet Writers”